US military news, discussions and history

[AMDR]

Navy Preps to Build Next Generation LXR Amphibious Assault Ship
Navy Preps to Build Next Generation LXR Amphibious Assault Ship | Defense Tech

The Navy is preparing to build its new LXR amphibious assault ship in order to meet the fast-rising need for amphibs across the globe, Congressional sources said.

Efforts to begin the process of production and delivery of the new ship come as the service is finalizing its plans to start a competition to build the vessel — a new platform designed to replace the services’ existing fleet of LSD 41/49 dock landing ships.

The existing Navy plan calls for the service to award the detail design and construction contract for the lead ship by 2020 with delivery planned for 2026, Maj. Gen. Robert Walsh, director of Navy Expeditionary Warfare, told Military.com.

However, during its mark-up of the 2016 defense bill, House Armed Services Committee lawmakers added $279 million for advanced procurement of materials for the LXR.

The Navy is now finishing up what’s called a capabilities development document in preparation to release a formal proposal to industry groups interested in competing to build the new ship.

After an extensive analysis, the Navy has decided to base the LXR design upon the hull of an LPD 17 Amphibious Transport Dock, Walsh added.

This decision means the new ship will have more command and control technologies and aviation capability than the LSD ships they are replacing in order to allow for more independent operations.

This is because the LSD, which is key to bringing a lot of equipment from ship to shore inLanding Craft Air Cushions, or LCACs, does not have the same ability to operate independently of an Amphibious Ready Group compared to the LPD 17.

“An Amphibious Ready Group has traditionally been together in three ships. Now, in today’s environment, the new normal for operations means that we are splitting those ships out in three different directions in many cases. Having an LPD 17-type ship for the LXR is going to allow us to do even more,” Walsh explained.

The 1980’s era LSD dock landing ships consist of eight Whidbey Island-class 609-foot long ships. The 15,000-ton ships, configured largely to house and transport four LCACs, are nearing the end of their service life.

Both the LSD and the San Antonio-class LPD 17 amphibious transport docks are integral to what’s called an Amphibious Ready Group, or ARG, which typically draws upon a handful of platforms to ensure expeditionary warfighting technology. The ARG is tasked with transporting up to 2,200 Marines and their equipment, including what’s called a Marine Expeditionary Unit, or MEU.

The current configuration of the LPD transport dock is slightly different than the LSD dock landing ship in that it has more aviation capability, more command and control equipment, a crane for use on small boats and a different well deck configuration, Navy officials said.

The LPD is designed to operate with greater autonomy from an ARG and potentially conduct independent operations as needed. A LSD is able to operate four LCACs and the more autonomous LPD 17 can launch two LCACs.

Having more amphibs engineered and constructed for independent operations is seen as a strategic advantage in light of the Pacific rebalance and the geographical expanse of the region. The widely dispersed territories in the region may require a greater degree of independent amphibious operations where single amphibs operate separately from a larger ARG.

Walsh explained that the greater use of amphibious assault ships is likely as the Marine Corps continues to shift toward more sea-based operations from its land-based focus during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Also, the LPD is able to transport up to four CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters or two MV-22 Ospreys. The Navy had been planning on maintaining only 11 LPDs in the fleet, however additional funding has allowed the service to procure a long-desired 12th LPD, Navy officials said.

Overall, the Navy’s need for amphib continues to outpace the amount of ships available for missions, many Navy and Marine Corps leaders have said.

Navy and Marine Corps leaders have said the service needs as many as 50 amphibious assault ships to meet the needs of combatant commanders worldwide. Recognizing that reaching that number is not possible in today’s fiscal environment, Navy leaders have taken a number of steps to ensure more of the needed missions can be accomplished.

As part of this effort, the Navy has stood up an auxiliary platforms council designed to help develop other ships able to pick up a portion of the missions typically performed by amphibs.

This includes greater use of Mobile Landing Platforms, or MLPs, Afloat Forward Staging Bases, or AFSBs and Joint High Speed Vessels, or JHSVs, to perform the missions, Walsh said.

“We’re looking at all the different ways to repurpose them and use them in different ways to augment the current fleet. If you take these ships for some operations you can allow an amphibious ready group to focus on other missions,” he said.

Some of these missions might include anti-piracy, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief or the delivery of medical supplies, Walsh added.

 

[F-22Raptor]

New Virginia Class sub "John Warner" conducting sea trials

 

[Transhumanist]

C-17s Infiltrate The Carolinas During Massive Airlift Exercise

Joint Base Charleston was put under pressure last week conducting an extraordinary exercise to evaluate their ability to deploy a large aircraft formation during a simulated crisis. And by large I mean very big airplanes in a very big formation.

As part of Crescent Reach 2015, 15 aircraft departed the military base in Charleston from the 437th airlift wing for a multi-ship formation to Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina including 11 C-17 Globemaster IIIs. The 437th joined forces with the 628th Air Base Wing and reservists from the 315th Airlift wing to get things off the ground successfully. Along the way, the formation was met by four additional C-17s, six C-130s, E-8 JSTARS and two F-16s during the 82nd Airborne Division’s participation in All American Week.

Testing the pilot’s abilities to fly in a large formation was only a portion of the goals for this exercise. Deploying members’ ability to survive and operate in dangerous environments was also exercised through Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear Explosives training and evaluation events. As another part of the mobility portion of the exercise, over 1,500 paratroopers and critical equipment were dropped to simulate a Joint Forcible Entry of the Global Response Force. Additionally 40 Container Delivery System (CDS) bundles, eight dual row platforms and one heavy platform were dropped from the airlift aircraft.

CDS bundles are roughly the size of a coffin and used to supplement equipment carried by the airborne paratroopers or resupply forces already on the ground. The CDS has its own self contained cargo parachute that deployed with a 20 foot static line attached to the C-17.

The dual row platform is intended to drop much heavier equipment with weights upward of 14,000 lbs. Heavy drop is used by airborne forces most often to deliver vehicles, bulk cargo, and equipment.

The value of a exercise of this magnitude allows the armed forces the opportunity to see training completed on a smaller scale now executed of a larger, more real world scenario. The annual mobility exercise allows the airlift wing the chance to perform almost every aspect of a combat mission including intelligence development, aircraft loading and launch, airdrops and special operations and landings on semi-prepared runways.

 

[F-22Raptor]

USS John Warner

John Warner and friend:

You beat me to it!

 

[Transhumanist]

USS John Warner

You beat me to it!

It's a cute picture with the dolphin. I'll delete mine, you can have this one.

 

[AMDR]

F-35Cs Cut Back As U.S. Navy Invests In Standoff Weapons | Defense content from Aviation Week
"Two new initiatives cover standoff weapons launched outside the range of surface-to-air threats. The new-start Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile – Extended Range (AARGM-ER) gets $267 million in development funding across the 2016-20 FYDP and will mate the existing guidance system and warhead of the AGM-88E AARGM with a new motor. Two motor options were studied: dual-pulse for a 20-50% range improvement, or solid integrated rocket-ramjet for doubled range. Budget documents indicate that the Navy has chosen the rocket."

There were rumors that they are also going to trim the forward wings that are usually found on the regular AGM-88 down to a size that would allow AARGM-ER to fit the internal bay of a F-35, but I haven't found any official information confirming that. Could anyone else confirm this?

 

[Indus Falcon]

@AMDR was there a thread on lasers?

 

[AMDR]

@AMDR was there a thread on lasers?

This one? Star Wars comes a step closer: US military bosses reveal success tests of airborne 'death rays'

 

[Indus Falcon]

This one? Star Wars comes a step closer: US military bosses reveal success tests of airborne 'death rays'

Thank You my young friend!

 

[Indus Falcon]

Northrop to receive $4bn worth of Global Hawk work through 2020
By: James Drew
Washington DC
Source: Flightglobal.com
20:48 12 May 2015

The US Air Force plans to award Northrop Grumman contracts valued at $4 billion to sustain and modernize the RQ-4 Global Hawk over the next five years as the high-flying unmanned aircraft emerges from the shadow of potential retirement into a normalised defence programme.


The awards would follow a protracted debate in Washington over whether the spying variant of the RQ-4 should be retired in favor of the manned alternative – Lockheed Martin’s U-2 Dragon Lady – which saw Northrop’s Global Hawk Block 30 programme dropped from the air force’s budget plan for fiscal 2013.

Now, with funding restored and milestone C approval from the Pentagon, the programme office based in Ohio wants to put the Global Hawk’s tumultuous acquisition history behind it and move the unmanned spy plane purchase into the operations and support phase, with just three more Block 30s left to deliver.

The contracts, including modifications to existing efforts, are to be awarded sole-source to Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation in San Diego, California, are worth $4 billion in total and cover fiscal years 2016 to 2020. The deals are foreshadowed in a May 8 justification and approval document published on the US government’s contracting website, which notes that it would take about four years and $300 million to $500 million to qualify another company to assume the prime contractor role form Northrop.

According to the notice, the positive milestone C decision by the Pentagon’s top acquisition executive in February puts the Global Hawk programme back on firm footing after years of uncertainty and significant cost breaches. It also allows the programme office to move ahead with new modifications efforts, like improvements to the ground control system and communications upgrades.

Other planned improvements include an anti-icing system for the air vehicle’s wings and v-tail, the installation of a weather radar, and engine enhancements – allowing the aircraft to push through bad weather conditions to the target area, which is particularly important in the Pacific region. The air force also wants to modify the aircraft to carry different payloads like the U-2’s MS-177, optical bar camera and senior year electro-optical reconnaissance system.

But according to the notice, the sole-source nature of the contracts does not relieve the air force of its “ongoing responsibility to actively assess and pursue competition”. Instead, the air force must reevaluate the “competitive environment” prior to any contract actions with Northrop in fiscal 2019 and 2020.

Northrop’s director of global intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems John VanBrabant told Flightglobal last week that normalising the program with the milestone C decision signals to other Global Hawk customers that the air force is fully committed to the programme. “It sends a very positive signal,” he says.

“The airplane and system is lobbying for itself,” he says. “Just the facts are saying to the air force that this is a worthwhile program to maintain and continue to invest in. And, it sends a signal to the appropriators and the armed service committees [in Congress] that this is a reliable system doing good things for the air force.”

The Global Hawk started life as a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency technology demonstration effort in 1995 and transferred to the air force in 1998. The original manufacturer was Teledyne Ryan, bought by Northrop in 1999.

The UAV entered development in 2001, and the aircraft were quickly fielded to support combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq despite well-documented design flaws.

The Block 30 programme was dropped from the fiscal 2013 budget proposal in February 2012 due to cost and capability concerns, but the air force chief of staff ordered that the aircraft keep flying.

Congress then blocked any retirement actions in defense policy legislation. Funding was fully restored in fiscal 2015, and now the U-2 will be retired instead starting in 2019.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/ar...FGUAV-2015-0527-GLOBnews&sfid=70120000000taAj

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

C-17s Infiltrate The Carolinas During Massive Airlift Exercise

Hmm this bridge pic seems familiar..

oh yeah this awesome video

 

[AMDR]

L-3 KEO Wins Contract for Navy Low-Profile Photonics Mast Program
SEAPOWER Magazine Online

NEW YORK — L-3 Communications announced in a May 26 release that its electro-optics business, L-3 KEO, was awarded a $48.7 million contract from Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) to develop and build a new, slimmer version of its photonics mast for the Block 4 Low Profile Photonics Mast (LPPM) program for use on Virginia-class submarines.

Under the terms of the contract, L-3 KEO will perform engineering and design work for the lower-profile mast during the first year, with options to produce up to 29 photonics masts over a subsequent four-year period, as well as engineering services and provisioning item orders with a contract maximum ceiling value of $157 million.

The non-hull-penetrating LPPM provides a sleek profile that significantly reduces the signature of the periscope, making it less identifiable as a U.S. Navy submarine because it appears similar to existing periscopes.

“We are extremely pleased to collaborate with the U.S. Navy on the Block 4 LPPM program, which will significantly enhance Virginia-class submarines in deployments around the globe,” said Steve Kantor, president of L-3 Electronic Systems. “This is a great opportunity to build on our long-standing partnership with the Navy by delivering sophisticated imaging technologies to a valued customer with well-defined, mission-critical requirements.”

“We are very pleased to have been selected to provide the U.S. Navy with a photonics mast that combines the enhanced situational awareness capability it wants with the more stealthy footprint it needs to avoid detection in international waters,” said Matthew Richi, president of L-3 KEO. “As the leading submarine imaging provider in the world, we look forward to focusing on the interoperability of our systems to explore export licensing opportunities with international navies.”

Richi added that KEO plans to develop its LPPM so that NAVSEA can support new construction submarines, as well as retrofits to existing submarines, as part of a continuous modernization program that addresses reliability, performance and affordability.

 

[Transhumanist]

Navy Assessment: LCS Fort Worth Needed 90 Percent Less Maintenance than Freedom in First 3 Months of Deployment

The Littoral Combat Ship USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) is six months into its 16-month deployment and requiring an order of magnitude fewer hours of corrective maintenance than its predecessor, USS Freedom (LCS-1).
In Fort Worth’s first 90 days deployed, the ship was underway for 53 days – 11 more days than planned. In contrast, Freedom was underway only 36 days in a similar period, according to an internal Navy assessment of Fort Worth’s early performance obtained by USNI News.

The second ship surpassed its expected underway days when it skipped a restricted maintenance availability and delayed a preventative maintenance availability to participate in the search and rescue efforts for Air Asia Flight 8501 in January.

Fort Worth also had fewer casualty reports than Freedom – 39 total, compared to 44, and zero of the most severe Category 4 (CAT 4) casualty reports.

The real difference between the two deployments, though, is in corrective maintenance needs. Fort Worth required just 396 man hours of corrective maintenance in three months – less than a tenth of the 4,200 man hours of corrective maintenance Freedom needed.Forth Worth required just one stop for corrective maintenance, which was performed during its preventative maintenance availability, whereas Freedom had to stop operations and perform corrective maintenance in four separate occasions.

“Technical adjustments, training improvements, and operational changes have given operational commander confidence to extend Fort Worth’s area of operations and to delay maintenance when required for operational tasking,” the document notes.

The extended area of operations the document refers to was made possible by a “maintenance in a box” concept the Navy tested in the spring. Program Executive Officer for Littoral Combat Ships Rear Adm. Brian Antonio told USNI News in April that the Navy pre-staged two trailers in Sasebo, Japan – one with all the parts the ship and its mission package might require, and one with the tooling the maintenance workers would need to perform the work away from the main LCS hub in Singapore.

“One of the feedbacks we got back from the fleet with Freedom was that her legs weren’t very long, in that every 25 days or so she needed to come back to Singapore to get a maintenance availability – which means you can only go a certain number of days out, and its’ a big ocean,” Antonio said in the April interview.

Freedom will begin a selected restricted availability in San Diego next week, in preparation to replace Fort Worth when it returns in March 2016, USNI News understands. Lockheed Martin won a $10.3 million contract modification to complete the dry-docking availability, which includes maintenance, modifications and upgrades, the Defense Department announced in April. The work should be complete by October.

Fort Worth also just conducted a crew swap last week, with LCS Crew 102 departing San Diego for Singapore to relieve LCS Crew 103. Detachment 4 Surface Warfare Mission Package crew and Detachment 3 from Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 35 deployed too for the next approximately four months of the deployment. The LCS ships are manned under a 3-2-1 model – three crews will support two ships, one of which will always be deployed.

From Navy Assessment: LCS Fort Worth Needed 90 Percent Less Maintenance than Freedom in First 3 Months of Deployment - USNI News

 

[F-22Raptor]

More F-35B testing aboard the USS Wasp

 

[AMDR]

Air Force Developing Swarms of Mini-Drones
Air Force Developing Swarms of Mini-Drones | Defense Tech

The Air Force is in the early phases of developing swarms of mini-drones designed to overwhelm and confuse enemy radar systems or blanket an area with multiple sensors at the same time, service officials said.

While still primarily in the laboratory stage, the concept is gaining traction with Air Force scientists who are making progress developing algorithms for swarms of small unmanned aircraft vehicles, or UAVs, said Mica Endsley, Air Force Chief Scientist.

“It is built on the biological concept of say a swarm of bees, for example, where you can see a lot of them fly as a group but they do not run into each other. They manage some type of coordinated activity between them in order to be able to navigate successfully,” Endsley told Military.com. “In the laboratory – we have developed algorithms that allow small UAVs to be able to operate that way so that they can work in conjunction without running into each other.”

Endsley added that the precise roles and missions for this type of technology are still in the process of being determined; however experts and analyst are already discussing numerous potential applications for the technology.

Swarms of drones would be able to blanket an area with sensors even if one or two get shot down. The technology could be designed for high threat areas building in strategic redundancy, Air Force officials said.

“You might want to set the task for five or six UAVs to go and cover a particular area where they work in conjunction with each other. Maybe one has one type of sensor and the other has another type of sensor — so they could cue each other,” Endsley said.

“If one picked up an object of interest, it could cue another one to go examine it with maybe a different kind of sensor that might a higher resolution. They would be working together to accomplish a particular mission.”

Groups of coordinated small drones could also be used to confuse enemy radar systems and overwhelm advanced enemy air defenses, Endsley acknowledged.

“This has the ability to provide so many targets that they cannot be dealt with all at once,” said Phillip Finnegan, UAV expert at the Teal Group, a Virginia-based consultancy.

“This is an important area of research because it offers the potential to provide new ways of attacking an adversary at lower cost. It is also important to understand that an adversary might wish to use swarms against the United States — so this has an offensive and defensive character,” Finnegan added.

In addition, small groups of drones operating together could function as munitions or weapons delivery technology. A small class of mini-drone weapons already exist, such as AeroVironment’s Switchblade drone designed to deliver precision weapons effects. The weapon, which can reach distances up to 10 kilometers, is engineered as a low-cost expendable drone loaded with sensors and munitions.

Cost is an important element of the mini-drone swarming concept, Finnegan added.

“From a cost perspective, it is important to figure out how to do this in a low cost way. If you start using expensive munitions, it is prohibitively expensive,” he said.

Air Force plans for new drones are part of a new service strategy to be explained in an upcoming paper called “autonomous horizons.” The new Air Force strategy, to be released next month, also calls for greater manned-unmanned teaming between drones and manned aircraft such as F-35s.

The Office of Naval Research is also working on drone-swarming technology through an ongoing effort called Low-Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarming Technology, or LOCUST. This involves groups of small, tube-launched UAVs designed to swarm and overwhelm adversaries, Navy officials explained.

“Researchers continue to push the state-of-the-art in autonomy control and plan to launch 30 autonomous UAVs in 2016 in under a minute,” an ONR statement said.

The demonstration will take place from a ship called a Sea Fighter, a high-speed, shallow-water experimental ship developed by the ONR.